Add a persistent, agent-updatable status panel for each Desktop thread

What variant of Codex are you using?

Codex App (Desktop) 26.721.4979.0 on Windows 11 x64.

What feature would you like to see?

Please add a persistent, user-controlled status panel for each thread or project that remains outside the scrolling conversation and can be updated by Codex through a safe, declarative interface.

The intended layout is:

• the conversation continues and scrolls in the upper area;
• a compact status monitor remains fixed at the bottom;
• the monitor does not move when new messages arrive;
• it can expand or compact without becoming a modal overlay;
• its state persists across normal thread activity and, optionally, app restarts.

A useful first version could expose fields such as:

• North / objective: the stable purpose of the thread;
• Now: the current subtopic or operation;
• Open work: active, queued, blocked, and ready-for-review items;
• Next closure: the next concrete result expected;
• optional owner, process, or verification state.

Codex, skills, plugins, automations, and visualizations should be able to update this panel through a host-controlled declarative schema. The host should own rendering, accessibility, persistence, and security rather than accepting arbitrary HTML in application chrome.

Why this would help

Long-running and multi-thread projects are difficult to direct from conversation history alone. Important goals and unfinished work scroll away as the chat advances. Repeating a status block in every assistant message creates noise and still does not provide a stable operational view.

Codex already renders native, non-message UI such as the compact “Step X / Y” plan indicator. A supported status-panel surface would let users and agents extend that continuity pattern without trying to imitate native UI inside a scrolling visualization.

This would be especially useful for:

• coordinating several parallel threads;
• supervising long-running development or document workflows;
• preserving the stable objective when the conversation temporarily changes topic;
• showing blockers and human decisions without searching earlier messages;
• reducing duplicated status summaries in the conversation.

Suggested behavior

1. The user can enable or disable the panel per thread/project.
2. The panel is fixed outside the chat scroll container.
3. Codex updates it using keyed, idempotent state rather than free-form DOM access.
4. The UI supports compact and expanded modes, keyboard navigation, visible focus, screen readers, and mobile/desktop layouts where applicable.
5. New agent updates never erase the stable objective unless the user explicitly changes it.
6. Sensitive values, tokens, local paths, and unrestricted HTML are rejected.
7. A stale or unavailable source is shown explicitly instead of presenting outdated state as current.

Acceptance example

While a long response streams and the conversation scroll position changes, the bottom panel remains visually stationary and continues to show:

Objective: Deliver the current project
Now: Verify module 2
Open: 1 active · 2 queued · 0 blocked
Next closure: Local review URL

Related requests / non-duplicates

• openai/codex#32195 requests a persistent usage-limit indicator in the bottom status area; this proposal is a general per-thread agent-updatable status surface.
• openai/codex#32226 requests a persistent development-services panel; this proposal covers project goals, work states, blockers, and next closures beyond local services.
• openai/codex#32444 requests configurable workspace layouts; this proposal specifically adds a structured, persistent status contract that Codex can update safely.

No project files, private URLs, credentials, logs, or customer data are included in this request.